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You ask Jujimufu, and Jujimufu responds. Here are some questions I get through the contact form on this website and directly through e-mail, and here are my responses for everybody to see!

Question from Nico Nawracala about Full time jobs and motivation:

Hey Juji I have question for you!!!

How do you stay that motivated all the time? Besides acrobolix you have a full time job, A dog a garden and time for your friends without burning out. You can still write the best articles in the world and stayed focus. I have struggle to stay focused and doing more then one thing. How do you manage your life so greatly?

My answer,

Full time jobs are different for everybody. Full time for me is 32 hours per week, and I have quite a bit of free time here during these 32 hours (see what I did there?). I have an office job that is already very easy, and as I have continued working here since 2009, I’ve found ways to do everything my way to make it even easier. Here are some examples…

I bring my own computer to work because the work I must do is going to get done the best on my own computer with my own software. For years I was too stupid to do this, wasting at least 30 minutes cumulatively everyday because the computer my company furnished me with was slow and the stock software sucked. So I purchased a computer carrying strap and carry my own computer back and forth from work now.

Besides my home computer being my work computer, I also have uploaded all of my work files to cloud storage; I no longer need to back these files up and I can access them anywhere, not just on my own computer. I also routed my non-gmail work e-mail through my gmail account (so it’s basically gmail’ed now). This way I can access my work e-mail anywhere (gmail app on mobile device). I also make use of all of gmail’s features, such as tag, star, sort, templates, and search so that answering redundant work inquiries can be done instantly, anywhere, anytime. If I didn’t do any of this, I would be like almost everybody else in my company: tethered to, and dependent upon a work computer to access desktop files and answer work e-mails via desktop outlook express. There is no reason I need to be at work to complete a large portion of the projects I’m responsible for, such as generating technical documentation or producing social media articles. I brought all of this to my supervisor’s attention and boldly requested to work from home once a week. Granted. I also asked to arrive an hour earlier so that I could have an extra hour on my lunch break to train. Granted. If I didn’t ask I wouldn’t of gotten anything. What’s one thing I have never asked for? A salary increase. I have never asked for a salary increase since I have been here nearly 5 years. Why? Because I don’t want more money, I want more freedom. The boss knows my preference for freedom. So the boss doesn’t give me a raise, instead he just looks the other way when I walk into the company kitchen past his office every 20 minutes to get water, coffee, or make food. Basically, I made my already easy job even easier, earning myself some extra freedom, because I was motivated by something outside of my job…

Easy.

For jobs that are immune to this hacking mentality, and therefore cannot be made easier or more palatable: avoid them. Find an easy job that can be made even easier. Easy jobs have always existed, all throughout the world and all throughout history. If you can’t find one, keep looking. They are out there, trust me. When you do, you will be the envy of all your family and friends. Don’t settle for a hard job. A hard job will fuck with your training and love life. You will have better luck finding an easy job if you have some education or if you can afford working only part time. Or both.

A hard body and a hard job don’t mix well.

Smart people throughout history have always sought out easy jobs and stress free gigs so they had time to work on their leisure projects. Take Baruch Spinoza, an influential philosopher for example. He was employed at an optics workshop where he sat on his butt all day grinding the occasional microscope lens or telescope lens as needed. It was a slow and boring dead end job that didn’t even pay enough money to support his already meager lifestyle (he also depended upon donations from his philosophy friends). While employed at this optics workshop, Spinoza was actually offered a high paying, prestigious position as the chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. If Spinoza had even a slight itch to stroke his ego, or earn a significant more amount of money, he would have jumped at that opportunity; but instead he refused it. Why? Because Spinoza was smart! He understood the value of his easy job! He knew what he was getting away with. He was essentially getting payed to scribble crazy shit on paper for his philosophy projects under the guise of an optics workshop employee. Occasionally, he took a much needed break from the horrors of his own mind to cut and shape a lens. He would be nuts to leave a job like that!

Spinoza hard at “work” in the optics workshop

I have a feeling if the demand for optic lenses had ever increased during his employment there, he would have quit and looked for another easy job. Spinoza was actually the philosopher who Albert Einstein named as the most influential for his own world view. Speaking of Einstein: Einstein worked at a patent office for a long time during his youth. This low stress, socially palatable, easy job gave him the optimal blend of monetary support and freedom that he needed to think about other things, like what light is.

Anyway, you can have an easy job that provides an abundance of freedoms but still lack motivation to do cool and challenging things. This is made evident by the mass of white collar workers out there who have easy jobs like Spinoza and Einstein (and myself), who waste all of their free time at work browsing amazon.com, facebook.com, or maintaining a virtual garden, who still have little motivation outside of work to do basic things like exercise or cook, let alone cool and challenging things, like compete in an athletic competition or write books. Why aren’t these workers motivated to do cool and challenging things? What’s missing? Great results. They aren’t getting great results when they take on these leisure pursuits. When Spinoza and Einstein thought about complicated crap, they got great results. They knew they were unraveling great mysteries of science and philosophy; they were motivated by their great results. Here are some things that happen to you when you begin getting great results,

First, you feel amazing because of it.

And then, possibly…

People smile at you because of it.

People want to be your friend because of it.

People pay you respect and openly recognize you because of it.

People appreciate you for it.

People want to have sex with you because of it.

You win an award because of it.

You get money and things for it.

You have profound peace of mind because of it.

So now remember this next thing I’m about to say, The ultimate key to motivation is getting great results. If you aren’t getting great results in the cool and challenging things you pursue in your leisure time after quite a lot of trying, quit them. Satisfaction is not enough, you need to be winning at shit. You need to be better than other people. Satisfaction isn’t your destiny. Winning is. If you can’t win at what you do, if you can’t beat other people, if you can’t get great results like those I listed above no matter how long and hard you try, just quit and then find something else that you are better suited for. And I’m not saying you need to get great results all the time, I’m saying you need to be capable of even getting them in the first place. I’m not preaching a philosophy of instant gratification here, I’m being brutally-realistically-honest. So let’s talk about tricking.

If you try tricking for a year and you never get great results like the examples I listed above, quit tricking. Tricking isn’t for everyone. Maybe you’re way too tall or have too many other awesome interests and you can’t juggle everything well. Nobody thinks less of you, you tried. Congratulations and thank you for being a bad ass and giving it a shot. If you suck at tricking but enjoy it, go ahead and continue sucking at it for as long as you like, but I’d highly recommend looking around for some other things to do too that you don’t naturally suck at; that you also find enjoyment in. However, if you try tricking for a year and you sometimes get great results like the ones I listed above, then you’re good to go! That means you’re average just like me! Look, I don’t have a gift for tricking or training, but I’m certainly not ungifted for it. I have an average amount of capability. I’m average. And that means I get great results, but only sometimes. I often get frustrated with tricking, for months at a time. However, because I have gotten great results in the past, because I know I can get great results, I work through hard times. I reorganize and optimize my life. More great results are just around the corner, even if it takes me months to get around that corner.

One of the best ways to ensure you continue getting great results in your leisure pursuits is to make yourself accountable to others. This may or may not mean competing in organized competition, but it always means participating in your chosen activity openly where others can watch and judge you. Speaking of competition, do you think my friend Antoine Vaillant has any problem staying motivated to win his bodybuilding competitions? No. Because if he fucks up people will talk shit about him on forums all over the internet. If he does great it will create a gigantic, positive buzz by his fans; he’ll get a trophy, money, and free supplements. That’s motivation for yah! Put yourself out there, like Antoine does. Post videos on YouTube, enter competitions, call out others, perform in front of others, post and push your efforts online. Do it. You have to.

Having your motivation begin to scale up as you get great results with your leisure pursuits outside of work will make it even more critical that your work life complies with your need to continue getting great results. Personally, I need an easy job, otherwise I wouldn’t be nearly as competent in my tricking and training. My level of proficiency has risen so much in tricking and training that it would be impossible for me to work a hard job and maintain that level. So what about quitting my easy job and making a living out of my tricking, training, etc? I would be nuts! That’s the stupidest thing I could possibly do! My easy job furnishes me with the freedom to trick and train excessively while still maintaining an acceptable salary that affords me everything I need and want. If anything I’d make money doing both! I’m really happy with this setup. You would be too.

And so we have come full circle. You will do better at your job, and gravitate toward more compatible jobs, as you begin getting great results in those leisure pursuits you find suitable for you. You get better at your leisure pursuits by participating in your activity in public and in ways where other people can watch and judge you. You also get better at your leisure pursuits by seeking out easy jobs that give you the freedoms you need to excel in them. So here you go, my awesome three step plan for better life management, focus, and motivation:

Find an easy job. If you already have a job and it can’t be made easy, quit and find an easy job.

Make your easy job easier than it already is by doing things your own way and asking for privileges.

Find a leisure activity you aren’t inherently awful at, that you enjoy doing, and strive to achieve great results in it.

60 thoughts on “Ask Jujimufu #6 – Full time jobs and motivation”

Great article Juji, and perfectly timed with this point of my life. Recently got hired full-time for a physically non-demanding scientific job, and these points really make a lot of sense. I never considered the possibility of perhaps making my OWN PC my literal “work” PC. I find your philosophy very freeing and intuitive. I’m looking forward to seeing how exercising some of these suggestions in the months/years to come will affect my ability to freely pursue my out-of-work hobbies and interests 😀

Ha, I was actually thinking about one of your other articles and this current one actually is just on par with my thoughts about your methods. I think it’s great that you worked hard for what you wanted to do. You wanted to Train, Trick, Write, and be Expressive. You knew this would take a certain amount of money and education as well as time on your part to get what your wanted. And you went out and fucking did it like a boss. I also love the part about trying something out and seeing if you are any good at it, if you are doing well then keep going, but if you suck stop. Unless sucking makes you happy ha ha. It’s so simple man. It’s great that you can balance it all out, An easy job, a full time GF, a website, and a life time pursuit of Training and Tricking. I have found that if I actually don’t work enough I actually manage my time horribly. But If I have only certain amounts of time given to me I fight to get every minute out of those times in the name of bad ass progress. DONE.

great article. I’m at a life crossroads right now myself. Its about my job/career and how it affects tricking/training/lovev life. I think youre right – job shouldnt be a main thing you do in your life. Its better to just make a living with something that is easy for you and leave plenty of time for your hobbies, family, love, passion, headbanging and being a viking.

Also as a side note: I think tricking is the most sensitive thing to work stresses. I used to work at Target when I went to university. I moved pallets and boxes all around for almost a year there on my feet, it DESTROYED my tricking. My strength was okay, but it killed my tricking. I just gave up actually. That’s why I wrote that page about New Game + here:

Tricking does not like exhausting jobs. Tricking really really hates hard physical labor jobs. And when I first started working at the company I work at now, I had some difficulties tricking on my lunch hour because it wasn’t quite enough time. However, now that I get around 2 hours for lunch break it’s perfectly fine. So I’d recommend tricksters take my advice more seriously than anyone else: you will have trouble tricking into adulthood if you aren’t picky with your career/job paths. Choose strategically and wisely.

this is a hard one for me. final year as a medical student basically stripped me of any new gains in tricking and parkour. Juggling between work and play never seemed to work. I dont want my inner child to fade away into oblivion. i cant imagine the full time doctor life. :\

Medical school is harder than the medical profession itself. Also, don’t filter easy jobs by field, filter them by opportunity. There are plenty of easy jobs out there for people with medical degrees too. Although if you snag one, it will almost certainly mean less pay, and a longer time to pay your student loans. Don’t give up! Good luck!

Great article and great tip on finding ans easy job. While great results motivate me what also motivates me a lot is the feeling that I have to “unlock” a trick or “kill” a weight or even “mutate this muscle”. It feels like a game in some ways, it’s awesome 🙂

Oh man I don’t remember what I told you last but I’m wayyy off that area now haha. My undergrad and grad school experiences focused mostly on evolutionary and molecular genetics! I’ll be starting work with corn biotechnology in the next few weeks, using molecular breeding and associated statistics to create agriculturally awesome corn hybrids 😛 Seeing your workday habits and tendencies was pretty inspiring so I’m going into this with a giant grin on my face haha

Haha I’ve been thinking about doing PT as a result of my love for bodybuilding, but let’s be real, I’d hate training others and I’d eventually start to hate the sport itself. Guess I’m staying in the sedentary IT field for a while and let my hardcore side rage after work. Thanks Juji, it was eye opening!

The TT and later TS community was awesome global community of crazy people, not too crazy just right amount of crazy. It was awesome to talk to dynamo the conspirator from tasmania, jan one eyed bard/bruce lee from norway, that angolan guy with his backstabing dark stories how he bought internet, churo from mexico goat farm, seiji usa military cunt, shortySS the germna nazi lido, tvplrm hadyn others from great britain, that girl from new zeland and tricia from aruba etc etc etc there is much more…..

the reddit fixes all problems TT and TS had, its third time right !!! no more hosting headache, no more mods headache as voting system self mods and hosting is done by reddit…

if you think just comments on this site is enough, you are wrong, for u is good u see all of them in ur sweet wordpress admin room, but for people is impossible do shit they need legit community where they will post they first trick video and how they got their biceps bigger than pingpong ball and shit talking etc, now shit talking is even more legit as u can up vote down vote comments.

why u don’t blast a post about our sweet community on our subreddit?

is this because of me? yes for me tricking = backflips, but i do want to get flexible and do sweet kicks and maybe even spins even they look knee shattering to me, i think im just being a pussy….and even i hate weiglifting and think its crazy, why u don’t want alternative ideas out there, im making video of me getting buff in apeshit way to be legit etc…

common jujimufu make post about subreddit, dat icon in top right is awesome but most people don’t see it.

Thank you for your insight Juji. I’ve always wondered how you managed your life. Currently, I’m working as an intern in a media agency with 40 hours a week. My daily routine is basically like this:
7:30 wake up, eat, dress, drive to work
9:00 Work
12:30 Break
13:30 Work – 6:00
6 – 9 Fitness studio or tricking
9:15 drive home – 9:30
10:00 eat
(watching a tv show, playing some games, speaking to gf)
12:00 sleep

Of course, I’m not doing sports everyday because I like to enjoy some other activites as well (like meeting with friends, spouse and so on). As you can see, my time is limited to do all the things I’d like to. However, doing a more simple job is not an option for me because I find it boring. A job needs to be exciting and demanding (in a positive way) for me and not monotonous because it makes me feel kinda stupid (no offense, this is just me). And let’s be realistic: A job that fulfills all those criteria and pays enough money to provide a healty lifestlye (especially if you have to provide for a family later on) is hard to find or get.
Still, I’m unhappy with my limited time for sports and social/love/leasure life because one always suffers from the other and I struggle to set my priorities straight.

I’m very happy because I am meeting all of my top priorities. Which are eating, training, loving, fucking, writing, and connecting with people online. I would not trade my easy, boring job that affords me the optimal balance of freedom and resources to meet those priorities for a more amusing job that interferes with any one of those priorities.

You mentioned family life. How would it be for your kid to grow up with daddy not home until 9:30 at night because he chose an exciting and demanding job? Forget kids for a moment, how can your girlfriend (spouse? which one? you mentioned both?) How can she stand that? She’s not happy with this, you can’t convince me she is. Even if you’re the best fuckin’ guy in the world she doesn’t like it, she hates it. Though you mentioned you take time out for your friends and her, but then that hurts your training goals, right?

And I don’t know about you, but my friends (and girlfriend) like me because I do a great job of meeting these priorities and attending to them. They aren’t my friends because I have an exciting and demanding job. Most people who have jobs like that don’t have the great friendships or relationships they want in the long run. They often end up single, divorced, or lonely.

It is absolutely unnecessary to make all of this so difficult. Straighten and assert your priorities. Then after your internship is finished, find an easy job.

No it makes perfect sense. I agree with the author that the more you make the more you spend, and the reasoning behind spending more because you have less time fits perfectly with my experience too. I only disagree with one thing I read, in that it’s of businesses interest to maintain 40 hour work weeks to keep the economy going. The economy is made up of individual businesses, who’s interest is productivity and saving money and earning more money. It’s hard to argue against the statistics that employees are happier, more productive, and less costly if you reduce their hours while still maintaining their benefits (health insurance, retirement packages, etc.) I see more and more workplaces in my city moving to this model. I’m not the only one working “full time” at 32… There are a lot of people out on Fridays now who don’t work them anymore.

You should read Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker if you haven’t already. Despite the faddy title, it is written by a physicist(always a good thing). It has and continues to change my life and how I live it. The author saved 70-75% of his income for 5 years and now has retired because he has savings to last his lifetime. During those 5 years he developed his skills instead of outsourcing to services/products(which is how he managed to only spend 25% of his income), he learned about banking and investing, invested chunks of his savings and now has a ridiculous sum, which – he claims – anybody can do given enough discipline. This is the direction I am currently heading towards.

The book outlines a “renaissance” philosophy with extreme ‘self improvement / skill development’ at it’s core as well as sticking a finger up to modern society/the man/those few powerful/mindless consumers/whoever.

brilliant article. i had this mindset years before i came to know your website or tricking. get an easy mindless job with an average but stable salary and have plenty of time for other stuff and pursuits

‘I began to realise how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours and a fixed salary and very little original thinking to do.’ -Dahl

How do I find an “easy job” that pays a decent salary like your’s? I would have to be really lucky.

I am currently a college student and switching majors to Computer Science which is not an “easy” major. I was originally Kinesiology but had no interest in doing Physical Therapy so I don’t see the job market to be promising so I switch to CS which will set me behind on graduating by another 2 years. Whether that is a good idea or not is a whole other story.

I’m not an authority on it or anything but I would just use common sense. Police officer or Grade school teacher: NOT EASY. Software Engineer or Technical Writer: EASY. And by Easy or not Easy I mean stress levels to an extent. Police officers and Grade school teachers are more hands on and deal with juveniles. Software engineer and technical writer are more private and don’t deal with people other than coworkers and some clients. Granted there is flexibility within every field, of course, the answer to your question is simply to use common sense and keep trying until you get lucky.

Workload and demands also matter. You can land what would seem to be a cushy technical writer job but the management and work pace become very demanding and stressful. That would be an example of what would seem like an easy job being NOT easy. But then with those situations you have to ask: “Can I make this easier?” and “Will it always be this fast paced?” A lot goes into this sort of things. I wish you luck man!

Love this article. As a medical school guy going into Orthopedic surgery I know that life sucks a bit right now, especially since I’m going for free because I’m in the Army as well. But once I can set up my own clinic and make my own hours I know I can follow this advice to a T. Thanks for the information.

Another thing, what do you consider “amazing results”? Example: My first year of tricking I sucked for a long long time. But then I landed my 540, sideflip, backflip, and b-twist all within a couple months of each other. Obviously I’ve got a long way to go still to be where I want to be, but I feel these moves getting easier, and other moves coming along slowly but surely. I hope this is enough to be “average” and continue. I love tricking. But I don’t want to suck at it.

When I first started tricking it took me 6 months of working on the 540 kick alone to land it. That’s the only trick I worked on and it still took me 6 months. I landed my first backflip 20 months after I started tricking, though I only started really trying it 3 months before I nailed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAKUYR4E43w. Anyway within my first year of tricking I did get great results, but I didn’t get them until I was about a year in. The 2-3 year mark is where the magic happens for tricking. Still, if I didn’t get anywhere within my 1st year I would have had to admit to myself that tricking wasn’t for me, or I wasn’t trying hard enough. It ended up being neither: tricking was for me and I was trying hard enough, but it did take around a year for things to begin happening. I’m actually a very slow learner myself, and have always had a lot of fear regarding tricks.

I’m the same way as far as fear goes simply because I’ve had an injury where I wasn’t able to walk for 6 months and I never want something like that to happen again. So I drill each aspect of a trick until I get it consistent. Plus I’m not light (6’0, 205 lbs, 14% bf) and I’m trying to get down to 8% by tweaking my nutrition. But regardless, it makes everything harder to land. Thanks for the reply though! Much appreciated. I’m using your nutrition advice as best I can over here in Afghanistan haha. =p

god Damn! You understand me man!!!…you have no idea how similar our thinking is…

It’s not like I just started talking to you and so I am making this up, but seriously I think about the same shit man!…very same..

For instance couple days back I said to myself: ” Vipul you havent done anything significantat work from past couple of months…and then I said to myself, wait a minute: “But I never really wasted anytime either!…I did not do anything significant because there was no work, I am an employee and I cannot create work, that’s done by someone else…I do what’s asked…and I was not asked to do anything…But one thing I definitely did!…I hit my 6 month goal of 150 kilos Squat despite being away for 2 months on a Business project and losing some strength!…So what if I did not work enough for a couple of months for someone else…even more importantly I worked my ass off on my own self…my vlogs are proof…day in and day out I would train and upload my videos to be accountable to myself and to be able to 3-4 years down the line look back to these and say to myself….Hell, I did really do significant work!…for years…on myself….winning!

i have a further appreciation for this article after working for a week. got a retail job which is detrimental for tricks and lifts (inconsistent hours, constant standing) and handing in a resignation letter effective in a week’s time is one of my best decisions i’ve made. fortunately the manager is pretty cool. it’s easy to an extent, but definitely not on my shins; pain’s returning. you get a lot of mindless moments and you’re really expected to fill in this form or that and arrange the stuff. i’d rather be a corporate stooge with a comfy desk than a retail sucker aching all over.

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I really appreciate this article, thanks Jujimufu. I really have this struggle balancing work and living a life. I mean, I have come to notice I was just living my life paying bills and fail to do the things I love doing. This article enlightened me, I will try to look for a more easy job that doesn’t eat much of my time and energy and get started again to what I love to do. Thanks Jujimufu

Yep! For fun, other no-bullshitting ways of balancing work and life other than finding an easy job: #1 find a partner who can help pay for shit now, or in the future has the potential to do this. Yes, relationships are for love, no, that’s not the only important thing in a relationship. Money is important too, find a girl/guy who can make some or cut your responsibilities in half. People who idealize relationships as being about nothing but love and cotton candy are idiots and fight about money. Oh how romantic… #2 minimalism is a cult, stay the fuck away from it, I was brainwashed by them for the entire year of 2010… but borrow some of their practices. Their “living with less” and “saving money” things are sort of like games in a way that require creativity. And are extremely good for saving money so that’s healthy! But be careful not to take them too far. Be very, very, very strict about practicing minimalist techniques only in certain areas of your life. Minimalism can be like a cancer that spreads to all areas of your life and the result is mediocrity and loneliness.

There’s an idea, an article “Jujimufu on minimalism”. I can see what you mean about it being a cult mentality. Sometimes when reading some of their ideas, it’s crazy. I definitely see the appeal of a minimalist lifestyle. Living in Utah,one of the best recreation states in the country (my bias is showing), I love going backpacking and canyoneering for longish (1-2 weeks) periods of time, so having the “only the necessities” mindset is easy for me to have. But now I’m striving to minimize the unnecessary and unimportant things in my life, and maximizing the important but probably equally unnecessary things in my life. Do I need to take these vitamins and supplements? Probably not. Do I want to be physically awesome and will these things help? Hell yeah! So take them. Do I need this awesome motorcycle? No. Is it going to really help me reach my long term goals in any way? No. Then don’t get it. Anyway, keep being awesome!

Hi Matt, I think you’re meaning to distinguish between a minimalist mindset and an essentialist mindset. Minimalism has a tendency to trap its followers into a “less is more” game that becomes destructive. Essentialism is about doing what matters most first. It’s sort of like minimalism but reverses the first action. Minimalism is about eliminating first. Essentialism is about picking the priority first. If the priority is picked and you have leftover who cares if you get a motorcycle? Why not go for it. With minimalism you get rid of the motorcycle first so that you are left with the priority. Both work but, like I said, minimalism has a tendency to trap you into a game of torturing yourself over which pens on your desk you really need of the 4 pens you have, trying to get down to some arbitrary “minimal” number. And puts you in a position where you end up doing this for everything, minimizing everything with the assumption that somehow doing this is going to reveal what matters exclusively so you have no choice but to work on it… But wait… Your socks… Gotta minimize those too. And your paperwork. Minimize that too… Gotta do these before I can work on what matters… And you end up going crazy like I did… Essentialism will get you to go straight for what matters first amidst the junk and then… who gives a fuck if you happen to have 4 pens on your desk when you only need 2?

Can you take me through the steps that got you to your ideal job situation? What did you study in college or other means to have you qualify for the job you have now? How did you know what “type” of job you wanted and how did you go about applying for these types of job? Did you have a game plan or did this all just kind of happen by accident? Thanks!

Be sure to pick something that’s going to get you an office job of some sort. Sitting all day isn’t the horror people make it out to be. Sitting jobs is only a horror if you’re an inactive slug. For someone like me who trains on their lunch hour and sometimes after work, it sure is a blessing to be able to sit on my ass and recuperate in between these times and get payed for it doing menial office labor… You’d much rather have a job where you sit than stand. Also you’d probably rather get a job that has a larger amount of computer work, or private work that doesn’t deal face-to-face with people nonstop. You sit all day as a bank teller for example but you’re constantly conversing with people… There are too many variables to really keep track of but you can narrow it down surely like I began to just now. 🙂

Regarding your choice of sitting vs standing, have you looked into some of Kelly Starrett’s and Katy Bowman’s work? They speak about the dangers of being sedentery most of the day, even if you train. They recommend altering you position very often throughout the work day, from sitting on the floor to kneeling to standing to standing on a balanace mat, on one leg, etc. I’m sure this approach would assist in your recuperation more so than sitting in a chair all day.

Yes I have, I preach the same things they preach in that regard. I write about correcting some of that in my upcoming eBook and there is a page on this website: pee squat drink, a routine to help with this during long office days. 🙂

Hi Wilfred. You need a college degree of some sort for an easy job like the one I have. I just put my resume a few places, one of which was my local university. A local company asked for a stack of resumes of Biology/Chemistry graduates from that university, picked a few of us, and called some in for interviews. It’s an office job. If I could do it all over again, I would have gotten an engineering degree instead of a Biology/Chemistry degree because I know a lot of engineers personally who have jobs as easy as mine except make 3-4x as much money. My degree isn’t useless, but it’s not as useful as theirs.

I am studying Kinesiology right now and don’t know what to do after but I love training. If I am getting a Masters then it won’t be in Kinesiology because I am not interested in more research topics, etc. It would be in something else complete different. I could never do Bio/Chem or even Engineer. I find Bio too boring and I hated chemistry. I am not too crazy about math and Thermodynamics and I would die in Engineering. I know a lot of students who are dying in that major, unless someone comes in with natural talents in math or studying then someone like me wouldn’t do so good in it. Any advice knowing what you know now? I am almost done but I don’t know which direction to go or where to even start. I will need some sort of income, any income in the beginning after college.

Just to give you some background info. I’m a chemical engineer, needed highschool qualifications (dont know what the american equivalent is to A levels) in Math, Physics and Chemistry to get into studying the degree. I started on a very good salary +30k and work 37.5 hours per week with flexi-time i.e. i can choose to come in work and hour early and leave an hour early or come in an hour later and leave and hour later. Or like Jon I come in early and leave late so i get a massive lunch break for training. The work is 99% computer based, however I do sometimes have to travel abroad which can disrupt a training routine, especially if I go to China where exercise is really not part of the general populations life so they dont cater for it in hotels e.g. last year while in North West china i stayed at a hotel which supposedly had a pool and a gym. The pool had no water and the gym had one treadmill and one bicycle, the treadmill did not work. Needless to say my planche and handstand improved a lot there 😛

Also don’t forget the other half of the equation: is it a job that can be “made” easy? Getting “GOOD” at something, in this case your job, is one of the most important ingredients to “getting” an easy job, or rather, “making” an easy job. But you have to be sure to pick a job that has that potential.

Word to the wise, IT service desk is one of the worst jobs, it may be simple but definitely not easy. You will be on the phone all day, hassled, interrogated, and logging so many damn tickets (and god forbid if said tickets are not detailed enough) by the end of the day you will start losing your sanity. Also, the pay for the type of work you’re doing and stress you endure is not worth it. Unless you really, REALLY love troubleshooting and jump with joy when your parents ask you with computer assistance, avoid it.

I’m currently doing a B.ed in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) I figured it would be a fun way to live wherever I want my whole life while doing something meaningful for others. But I’m just not sure how easy or hard it is to be teaching… So far the little bit of experience I had was hard, but I was an absolute beginner with no guidance at all.

I just discovered acrobolix, seems pretty awesome and I’ll keep on reading!

Felix, I teach at a martial arts school. It involves a lot more than the scheduled hours of teaching trying to help students who need extra help, preparing for events, etc.
I hear schoolteachers have it tougher with grading and such (which I essentially get done during class times). Also with continued education/curriculum development in the summer.
It’s not a job to take if you want to give your mind and emotions a rest during work generally.

I just finished 5 weeks of work with children in a “literacy camp” man teaching is hard. 5 hours a day with children is somehow so draining and like you said, there’s so much more than the scheduled hours of teaching. ‘Think I’ll find something else…

I’m thinking IT right now, my new goal is to become a digital nomad. ‘Looking for freedom, basically!

Read this after Juji’s “I quit my job” video. Awesome article! Felt like I could relate with finding a job that will allow you to spend time doing things that interest you. Being in my late 20s, I feel like I’ve worked hard to progress my career up to this point. I was working 11-12 hours a day, 5 days a week at a fast paced company. It was good money, but I found it difficult spending time with my girlfriend or doing any of my hobbies. I asked myself, why am I spending so much time working for someone else? I quit that job, and found one that is equal pay, without all the overtime. It allows me to do what I really have a passion for. I don’t make any money through the hobbies I have, but enjoy having time to do them. Maybe in the future, I can find ways to monetize my passion.
Thanks Juji!

(I posted this comment on your new youtube video, but I’m also posting it here because I love the article and I think it applies)

Thanks for the advice, Juji! I’ve been following you on and off ever since trickstutorials. I’m 25 now and I’m in that weird in-between place. I am a professional stuntman, and I make “some” money from youtube.. it’s very encouraging to hear how you talk about getting a job that you can like, which can pay for your interests. I was always wondering whether I should just apply to some crazy 100k+ job which would take all of my time and energy to learn (but I’d be making bank), but this article is another voice telling me that if I don’t get a job in something that gives me the freedoms to do the stuff that I enjoy (training, making videos), I will be miserable.

Who knows, maybe this year my stunt career takes off. That’s kind of my plan, to be able to pay for building my online brand through my stunt money. But then again, I’m still trying to figure out what my online brand IS.. right now I make filmmaking/stunt tutorials, and action comedy skits.

Thank you for your positive vibes and sound advice! YOU are awesome, and I believe that you’re a fantastic role model (physically and mentally) for a lot of people.

Have an awesome day, man!!

PS
I just realized that you subconsciously motivated me to write a series of stunt/tricking/filmmaking articles and tutorials a couple of years ago. On my website (rusticb.com) there’s some “resources” I put up (such as how to get into tricking, and a fight choreography series), which sound very similar in tone to the honest voice you use in your articles. My “honest articles” are the one getting constant traffic and thankful feedback. Hell yeah﻿